Spaces Between the Minutes
by AgapeErosPhilia
Summary: Cullen lives two lives, and one is becoming increasingly more real. Response to a prompt swap / request on Facebook. "If you don't mind, I have an idea for you. What if Cullen realizes he is just a 2D character, and he is in love with you, the gamer, instead?" One-shot, complete.


_A/N: This was written in response to a prompt swap / challenge from the Facebook group. The prompt given was actually a link to a third party's request for artwork, which ran: "_ _If you don't mind, I have an idea for you. What if Cullen realizes he is just a 2D character, and he is in love with you, the gamer, instead?" If you go to lilyrutherfordblog on tumblr and search for tebarar's request you will find the lovely artwork she did for it. Note that neither she nor the original requestor have anything to do with this fic, or even any awareness of it as far as I know, but I hope if either of them find it they would like it! I also apologize for not being able to keep the gender neutral, but it got too difficult. Enjoy!_

* * *

Cullen had always wondered about the materials that formed his life.

Of course, to say that he'd always wondered was the crux of the problem, because he never wondered at all, except when he was wondering. There were times when the world around him was clear and present, a thing that flowed from moment to moment without pause. Those times were the solid stone walls, the tapestries of spun silk, the mortar that never crumbled. A light from somewhere else, somewhere outside himself, illuminated every piece of his existence into something brilliant and true.

Call it the Other.

But there were other times, times when he was fog, and the things around him clouds without permanency. He didn't live so much as accumulate knowledge, like a man reading a story of his own life by walking in between the lines of the page. There was nothing to hold him in place and stop him from whirling into moments that connected to each other not at all. It was maddening, not the least because he never knew if he was the only one who lived this way. In the fog he couldn't remember to ask another, and in the light he seemed unable to control his purpose enough to try.

The first time he'd felt the Other's presence and knew that parts of his life were wrong was in the Circle Tower. Solona Amell, a pretty mage with hair like a sunset, had spoken to him and suddenly the fog was shot through and dispersed. Everything had solidified into shapes that looked no different but felt like the truth instead of a copy of it. Cullen had been puzzled as he stammered through a greeting, though it didn't stop him from speaking. The stammering was new, something he'd never done. While he was practically vibrating with the intensity of this new experience, certainly enough to do it, he also knew that he had to stammer. Something wanted him to.

Perhaps it was the Maker, guiding him as he'd been promised.

He stared at the mage as she spoke to him and realized he heard her words without sound. Was that normal? He searched his memory and discovered he didn't know, and that was the most distressing of all. Cullen was beside himself with confusion, even as he spoke about being at a Harrowing he only remembered in vague shapes and shrouded lines, until she she asked him to move somewhere more private.

He slumped forward in relief. Demons. The Fade. This was a temptation, as he'd been warned, and it only seemed more real because it wasn't at all. He was attracted to Amell so this was the temptation.

He frowned. He didn't feel attracted to her. He just knew he was. Another curiosity of the Fade.

 _Yes,_ he wanted to say. Temptation was to be denied, of course, and he didn't need to kiss this demon, but this reality was something he wanted more of. It was headier than lyrium and much more arousing. The thickness of the air was like fingers on his skin, and he'd almost swear that eyes other than Solona's were shivering over him, trying to pry away the joins of his armor until there was nothing but his skin.

He'd never expected demons to feel so pleasant.

But even as he tried to agree, his voice was spilling words from another place inside of him, another Cullen. He refused her invitation and ran back into the fog.

* * *

The second time the Other appeared, the demons were already there.

Amell had left Kinloch in that cobwebby way, and Cullen drifted along once more. In a jailor's circle in the Circle of jailors, reality brightened again. Cullen knelt on a floor that hardened under him into something new and yet very familiar. He looked up in hope, and Solona was there.

His heart lightened even as the other Cullen spoke of demons and tortures that were as distant as the stars. What were their pale scars compared to this heady feeling of reality? But his own words caught his ear, and he wondered if they were true. Perhaps this was simply another demonic reminder of the only temptation he'd ever given into. The only one that had ever burned in his heart like wildfire.

Kill the mages, his mouth said even while his mind worked on other paths. He was failing the test again, and the worst of it was he wanted to fail more than anything. He wanted, and whatever else was out there wanted just as much. A demon that wanted him, one that no longer lived in the Fade, and he was going to give in.

As soon as he thought it Amell freed him and left.

Later, moving through the scene in a way he didn't understand, he was arguing with Greagoir again to kill the mages. The world was light and true and real again, so this time he focused on his words. If he couldn't control them, he would use them. The demonic Other was back, and listening to him, and he was going to find it. A demon would want the mages to die, in the right way. A slaughter of mages would allow for possession just as easily. No demon could resist that, not even Desire.

He stared at Solona and past her as he begged for deaths. Now it would be clear what was happening, and at least he would understand the warring periods of his own existence.

But to his surprise, the Warden said no. Even more surprisingly, it wasn't the Warden at all who said it. It was the golden presence of the Other, who wanted them all to live, and Cullen to exist with hands free of blood.

So. Not a demon at all. The Maker, protecting his children, and given life through this woman. A new Andraste for a dark age. Cullen's heart was joyful even though he realized she would leave him again. Solona was the only source of this feeling there was, and Cullen loved it beyond all reckoning, but if Thedas needed Andraste, he would live in shadow forever.

* * *

It came back again in Kirkwall, a place he'd appeared in without remembering the journey. When Cullen's mind fired again into the light he felt different than he recalled, in both his bearing and his being. He reasoned that his shadowed journeys must have changed him. But did any person truly change this much? Even his face had changed, he realized when he ran his hand across his jaw and through his hair.

Then he remembered that Solona was dead, another fact known without hearing, learned without being taught, and he shouldn't be feeling this again at all.

He looked at the woman in front of him. Dark-haired, another mage, with eyes as blue as a mountain lake. She spoke with a voice that was a real voice, though, something he heard in his ears and not in his heart. Another difference between them. But as they ran through a conversation that seemed to stretch in front of him like a hallway, she told him she was an Amell behind the name of Hawke, and then he understood. Something about this family, mages in this family, drew the Maker to them and gave them all the power to make the world more.

No wonder her party was so loyal. No wonder they all stared and smirked and followed wherever she went.

Cullen wanted to love her, but his heart stubbornly refused to obey. He didn't stammer and blush in front of Hawke, and the spiritual presence that rode alongside her seemed to take less interest as well. Hawke certainly didn't seem to know him, and she never asked him to be alone. That grieved him terribly, but before he could even attempt to express it with words that weren't called up from another person's mind, she left.

He sighed as he faded once more.

* * *

He had other periods of awakening, like islands in a chain across a great expanse of sea. They happened whenever Hawke came to the Gallows where he lived without existing. The agony and grace of his condition was that he couldn't look forward to her visits, and he also couldn't miss her when she was gone. Ten years passed in this way, and she never treated him as anything but another stop on her own journey. She didn't save him. She barely seemed to know his name.

Cullen knew he was greedy for wanting so much. She was giving him colors and sounds and feelings again, which was more than he would have had alone, but he still remembered that delicious feeling of gazing desire that wanted to strip him bare and drink him in forever. It shamed him, a little, that he'd taken something holy and made it so profane. The shame also thrilled him just enough that he could never fully put the need of it aside.

When the Chantry exploded, fuzzily; when Meredith turned, hatefully; when he had to stand, heroically, Hawke was there, and so was the more he craved. When they were done, when she put a quiet confidence in him that he didn't deserve, he felt the Other shiver against him. The words were still just words, but there was more lurking beyond them.

His mind whirled in shock as he realized that it might be just as bound as him to a path that wasn't what he wanted, to words that were empty and meaningless compared to what was really felt. But that was madness. The Maker was bound by nothing and no one, and neither would His aspect be. Andraste or otherwise.

Not a demon. Not the Maker. What else was left?

He felt the world slipping again, grey edges melting into the abyss, and he struggled forward. "Wait," he cried. "Stay." The beacon of the Other's attention shone on him fully and gears ground and wavered with his rebellion. He was out of the pattern, he'd broken free in some way, and it had noticed him. It was surprised. It was curious. And above all, it was excited.

"Don't go," he tried again, but the world flattened and changed until he was nothing once more.

* * *

Evelyn Trevelyan was the next conduit, a blonde noble with lips the color of wine. Not an Amell this time, not even a mage, but the lines were crisp and clear around her just like always. They met over a strategy table in the middle of a Chantry, and while he spoke the lines expected of him he watched and waited for any signs of acknowledgment. He was different again, he knew - taller, broader, and face lined with nightmares he didn't remember having. Perhaps it wouldn't know who he was.

But when Trevelyan brightened the world around the training yard, she flirted only with him, and he knew that he was remembered. He could do nothing but stammer and blush, but she never stopped coming back, and he hoped this would be the time that he would know love instead of just thinking it.

It wasn't. Like Amell, with Evelyn love was knowledge without root, and all he could do was follow the words and hope that whatever watched him understood that this wasn't his choice.

* * *

Strangely, he started to see patterns in the world he hadn't noticed before. When Evelyn came, they spoke the same words every time. She would speak to him even if there was nothing new to be said, which was also strange because surely there was always something new. His throat worked to no effect when he tried to produce his own words, independent of the man who drove him. Whatever he'd done in the Gallows with Hawke, he couldn't repeat it.

He stopped taking lyrium, hoping it would help. It didn't.

He also saw the shape of the future winding in front of him. Not like a prophecy, or even anything clear enough to describe. It was more the way a road stretched before a traveler in the darkness. That little bit of lightness in a vast patch of black that showed there was something there to be followed. And like all roads, there were waypoints to find. Once in awhile he'd feel a bump and know that something had changed, and something new would happen to him. He argued with a chancellor on the steps while Trevelyan watched. He stood at the War Table and chatted while she pored over the map. A dragon attacked, he led the escape, and Evelyn disappeared beneath the rubble, but he barely felt it. Not just because the spaces between her were still muted, but because he could see the future had story yet to tell.

At Skyhold, things moved more quickly. The Inquisitor spoke to him frequently. The time between her visits grew shorter and shorter, and they found new topics inside of themselves. And one day, that seemed no clearer than any other, she took him to the battlements and told him she wanted him to kiss her. But it wasn't her. The Other was close now, breath held and waiting for him to respond. For once he didn't have to fight with himself or follow along like a passenger in a wagon. He pulled her to him and kissed her greedily, needfully, and the only problem was that it wasn't enough before she was gone from under his hands.

Cullen wondered if he'd been understood, then feared he'd been understood all too well. Evelyn didn't come back for a very long time.

* * *

He was in his office when the Inquisitor returned without warning. Hope rose in his heart unbidden, and he tried very hard not to expect too much forgiveness. But she didn't rush to speak to him as usual. She didn't even look at him. Cullen frowned. Something was wrong.

The world was clear because the Inquisitor was there, but somehow she wasn't there at all. She stood motionless while he waited behind his desk, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Cullen wondered if the Other had taken over, was watching him now. It didn't feel like it. But if he listened closely he could hear something, a distant calling that sounded like a dream of a memory of words. He held his breath, trying to find the strength to be insane.

"Hello?" he called quietly. His jaw worked strangely as he forced the words out. The Inquisitor didn't turn, still staring at the wall in quiet meditation. "Hello, are you there?"

No answer, no feeling of focus. He walked over to the bookshelf and tried again. "Please. I need to know what this is. Lyrium withdrawal? Something more?" he asked. His voice shook under the strain of effort. "Am I going mad?"

Without warning, he felt the eyes again. It was watching him. He spun around to see if another person had entered, but he was alone. His body resisted the movement, slow and awkward. He wasn't supposed to be doing this. This wasn't in the plan. He was a glitch.

Cullen shook his head to clear it. What was a glitch?

"I can sense you. Tell me who you are. Please!" He walked back to his desk easily, on an allowed path again, but when he got there he pounded his fist against the desk against every instinct he had.

"Tell me!" he cried again. He let out all of his fears in a rush of words. "Are you a god? A spirit? Some demon of the Fade, tormenting me?" Only it still wasn't torment, not in the least. The gaze on him was aching pleasure and a longing brushing gently across his skin.

She, because of course it was a she, it had always been a she, said nothing but he knew she drew nearer. A breath caught in a throat, far above him, and he felt it in the very marrow of his bones. He closed his eyes as he sensed her circling him, studying his face. He tried to find something to hold onto. "Is it the lyrium?"

 _No_ , he heard faintly, like a pebble dropped in a well with no bottom.

If it wasn't lyrium, what was it? If it wasn't the Maker or a demon, where was the truth? A tale that seemed already written, a world where choices were impossible and words that were given to him from without. Insanity. But there was only one choice left.

"None of this is real," he said. His lifetime of suspicions hardened into certainty. "I'm not real. Corypheus isn't real. The Fade isn't real, the Circle wasn't real, my life isn't real. She isn't real." He gestured at the motionless Inquisitor. The act of moving was getting easier, though his arms still resisted him at every turn. "This is a story. I'm a… I don't know what I am."

"But you're real. The only real thing in this place. And I can't see you," he said. "Show yourself to me!"

 _Can't_ , came the whisper, and a fist clenched around his heart.

"You've looked out for me. Cared for me, ever since the Circle. You made the choice to spare them, or whatever happens to things like me. You saved me from my anger, through Amell. I know it. And you guided me in Kirkwall. You believed in me. I thought you were the Maker, once, but He's not real either," he said. He frowned. "I don't know why I said that. I still believe in the Maker. He's watching over us. Except I also know He isn't. You are."

He paused again, awash in the truth of his words. "It's always been you. Sweet Andraste, who are you?"

And then the Inquisitor moved, brought back to life quicker than a snap of the fingers. She approached him at her usual run and spoke her usual greeting. Cullen settled back into the script of his life. His non-life. Whatever it was. The Other was still there, her essence burning a hole through him that couldn't be filled, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He was being pulled along inexorably into the words he knew so well.

Until the Inquisitor asked him to slip away again, and he found himself on the battlements once more. But there were no battlements. There was him, and there was the Other, and everything else was as insubstantial as the air. He'd been here before, in this place, but the feeling now was electric and new and altogether wonderful.

He kissed Evelyn as she desired, but he knew with certainty his lips were for another, someone he'd never seen but always known. He felt himself drawing back from the kiss, but he fought to stay, to deepen the experience so she would understand. His voice was gone, here, but he could still move, still pull the Inquisitor in for another kiss, and another, until his office flowed around them once more.

Evelyn stood motionless beside him, and he waved a hand in front of her face. No reaction. Right. The world hadn't changed. "That was for you," he whispered to the ceiling. A sigh floated across the world, filling it to bursting with her sound and her being. And then, just like that, she was gone.

* * *

The absence wasn't so long as the last one, and he was able to smile when the Inquisitor walked into his office again and stopped. "I'm glad you've returned," he said.

There were no whispered words, but he felt a hesitant smile pressed into the stone around him.

"So who are you? You never told me."

Nothing. Her focus was still on him, he knew, but there was no response.

He ran a hand through his hair. "Right. You can't talk to me. Just hear me. However I'm doing this," he said wryly. Talking was getting easier with practice, but he could still feel the world fighting against him as he spoke. "But I can feel your emotions."

Surprise, and a little nervousness.

"Don't worry, they've all been very pleasant. Sometimes even more than pleasant," he said with a wicked grin. And then there was embarrassment with a thrum of desire that knocked him breathless. He cleared his throat. "Can you feel mine the same way?"

The Inquisitor suddenly moved, and he jumped. But she only ran back and forth in a pattern, and he frowned. Back and forth in one straight line. Left to right. Right to left.

He laughed when he realized what she was doing. "So that's a no," he said. "You know, it's a little frightening that you can simply control someone's movements like that. Even if this isn't real." He ran a finger over his desk. "I assume you were also Amell. And Hawke."

There was no answer, but he didn't really need one. "That means I don't know what you look like," he said. "They were all so different. Obviously not you." A thought struck him. "I don't even know your name."

Another pointed silence, and he looked up. Looking at Evelyn was too strange, knowing what he knew, and for some reason he'd always imagined the Other above him. Watching over him, like a goddess. Or a lover in the night. "I have to know something about you. And we have to be able to communicate. Otherwise you'll get a very one-sided conversation about the unreal history of one Cullen Stanton Rutherford."

The Inquisitor moved closer and stood by his desk implacably. A clear message. He held up his hands in surrender. "If that's what you want. But I warn you, I'm very boring," he said. "The most interesting part of me is you. And also the most alluring."

He grinned at the shy discomfiture around him and began to speak.

* * *

They spent more time together that way, him talking and her reacting. He made a game of it, telling her stories to provoke the heady rush of some emotion to trace its way down his spine. When she laughed it was a wave of pleasure, surprise was a shiver that shook his whole body, and even her sadness washed through him in lonely comfort of his own. But she never answered questions about herself, and he stopped asking when her discomfort made him fear she'd leave for good. Instead he told her his conclusions about her, about her goodness and her bravery, and those embarrassed her but also produced a happiness that filled every corner of his heart.

But by far his favorite response, and topic, was when he spoke of physicality. When he described fighting, the way his arms and legs and body felt to be locked onto one objective, her focus sharpened in painful heat on his body. He wondered if she was imagining him moving with his warrior's grace, striking and feinting and defending and attacking. The first time he'd really tested her, lingering on the sweat and grime of battle and the effort needed to clean it from his skin, the frustration that pulsed in the walls made him groan in satisfaction. In later conversations he moved on to more carnal acts, to the things he enjoyed feeling and the things he enjoyed doing, until she was tormented beyond belief.

It was a little strange, given that the enjoyment he spoke of was academic only. He had memories of sex, but none of them had been with her there, so they were pages in a book that he'd read instead of things he felt. He wasn't even able to respond to his own words, physically, in the way that he wanted. Nevertheless, when the frustration and wanting around him built to an unrelenting crescendo he couldn't help but believe that he would certainly enjoy them all, with her.

Usually his talks ended with the Inquisitor coming to life and taking him to those beautiful battlements where he kissed and teased the woman who wasn't nearly close enough to whom he wanted to suit. But once she held off endlessly, letting him describe his mouth on her skin, his hands roaming her body, and his own self joining with her for so long that he had to smile. "I'd almost think you like it more when I say these things than you would if I actually did them."

Irritation mixed with horror. He laughed, picturing her brows drawn over the eyes that were brown and blue and black and green and every color in between. Her face was never the same twice in his mind, but that didn't matter. It was hers.

"You know, I sense that there may be… more I'm able to do. If you spend less time with me and more time with whatever the real story is," he said. He leaned against his desk. "And I'm very tired of wearing this armor."

Laughter and sympathy, but a hint of fear.

"I know. The end of the story. I don't know what would happen if we got there," he said. "But I think we could move forward, just a little. Just enough. What do you think?"

He held his breath, but when he ended up on the battlements again, showing her how much he wanted it to happen, he knew she'd agreed.

* * *

She wasn't in his office as often, but he found himself other places with her, in battles or even the War Room. Whenever he could he deviated from the script he lived to tease her or praise her or even just say hello. "Good morning, beautiful," he said once when she was at the War Table with them all, just to feel her flush. The story didn't like it, but hang the story. Some things were still permanent and inescapable, but that didn't mean he couldn't try.

The waypoints were moving faster and he fought to remember each minute with her even as he sensed something new coming. The shape of him, bare before her and happy, just as she'd wanted all those years ago when she was Solona.

It scared him a little, how much he wanted to give her everything she wanted, and how much he wanted her to want him. His mind tried to remind him that even if everything about him weren't a creation for some story, she was as far removed from him as the stars. He had no business thinking such thoughts, or feeling the things that he felt. He would make her happy, if he could. He would make her laugh, as long as she let him. But that was all it could be.

Until one day he stepped into a new waypoint and was lost.

* * *

There were people around his desk when the world sharpened again, and he looked up to see her the Inquisitor leaning against the wall. He glanced at the ceiling and grinned even as he shooed the people out of his office. This was a scene he couldn't improvise, that carried him along without any input, but it was okay because he was saying the things he wanted to say.

"Things are different now," said the Cullen inside, and it gripped his heart in a vise. "I find myself wondering what will happen after. When this is over. I won't want to move on. Not from you."

She was smiling, he sensed, but he also felt her tears like a brand. He was grateful when he turned his back. He needed to give her a chance to walk away. This was a selfish thing he was doing, for all he pretended it was for her.

Which was why, when the Inquisitor slipped in front of him in acceptance, without hesitation, he did wrench himself away from the path and close his eyes. "I wish this was you. It is, in my heart. Know that I've never wanted anything more."

A bottle slipped and crashed on the floor, and he cleared his desk with undisguised need. His hands traveled Evelyn's body in a way he hoped she would like, and when he rolled his hips it was only for her.

* * *

The world slipped away, then, and he was denied the moments that he truly wanted, but he did find himself happily in bed the next day. The Inquisitor was next to him but he barely looked at her, staring up at the ceiling instead. He smiled at the hole in it, hoping that it was a path that led directly to her. Especially because, as he'd expected, she was seeing all of him that there was to see.

"I hope you're impressed," he said, smirking, and he felt her laugh against his mind.

Then the Inquisitor spoke, and he was pulled back in to where he had to be. This was it. He'd been selfish long enough. Now it was time to let her have peace.

"Bad dream?" said Evelyn.

"No," he said to the sky. "But when you're not here, the world is paler. Lonelier. Every time you go I worry you won't come back."

He winced at the sadness that overwhelmed the laughter in the room. So much for giving her peace. "I didn't mean to worry you," he said. "It's more important that you're happy."

"Despite the dreams, is it still a good morning?" said Evelyn.

He propped himself up on his elbow and put on his most incredulous face. "There is no such thing as a bad morning if you're here."

Melting joy and something more that he couldn't bring himself to name. He closed his eyes. "It's perfect. You are… I have never felt anything like this." The words were given to him, but they were more true than she would ever know.

"I love you. You know that, right?" said Evelyn, and his eyes flew open again.

Love him. Could she? How? He was nothing, a vapor of space that was only real when she gave him life. There was nothing here to love, nothing at all. But she'd said it. Or the Inquisitor had, but she'd allowed the words to be said. He knew she had some control. She wouldn't have said it if it wasn't true, would she?

And above all he felt no fear in the air, just nerves and excitement. It was real. This was real, and his heart was full enough to burst. "I love you, too," he whispered, and even when Evelyn walked down the ladder and faded the world again, he couldn't keep the smile off of his face.

* * *

The smile didn't last.

If someone had asked him what he needed to be happy, finding out that his perfect woman not only accepted his love but loved him in return would have been his answer. But of course that was only half of it. The other half was being able to express it, freely and openly and at every moment. And that was impossible. He knew it as soon as he came back to the same place he'd always been, and there was nothing new to be had.

They spent time in his office again, with him speaking hesitant words and her happiness shrouded in quiet fear. He felt, but he couldn't show. He wanted, but he couldn't have. And they both knew that the waypoint they'd reached was the last one they would ever have on this path. Despite all his efforts, he couldn't see another one, and he'd never found even a partial way to hold onto himself when she wasn't there, much less escape. Much less hold her. Much less be the same life given meaning she was for him.

One day he broke under the weight of the pain, both within and without, and walked around to the front of his desk. He leaned on it and stared at the wood that was no longer bare. Maybe it would be easier if he was facing away from the still form of the Inquisitor. Maybe it would be easier if he wasn't remembering the night he'd wanted so clearly. Maybe it would be easier if he hadn't pushed her into fulfilling him for so pitiful a prize.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I asked you to do something that I wanted, but I didn't understand the costs. And now we're in an impossible place. Because of me."

Denial and anger, but he held up his hand. "Let me speak. Please." Or he might never be able to do it again.

"I know I'm not able to give you - to be all that you deserve," he said. He tried to hide his face, but the eye of her followed him as it always did. Her constancy resolved him even more. "We can't go back, and we can't go forward. There is only here, like this, and it won't be enough."

He laughed softly, but it held no humor. "I don't even know your name."

No answer, no movement, just silence in the air.

"So if you want, or need, to continue without me, I understand. Or do whatever it is that you do when you go away. I can't ask someone like you, someone with your heart, to stay with me when I can't see you, can't touch you, can't show you…" He trailed off. "I'm a shell of a man. That night was the most important thing I've ever experienced, and I didn't experience it all. The morning was more wonderful than I could have dreamed, and it still left me empty. Empty, even though it was as real as I'm capable of being."

Doubt in the air. Trepidation. Insecurity.

He ran a hand over his neck and tried to reassure her even while his heart was breaking. "Everything I said was true. I love you. It's foolish, to think I can love. To think that I'm even capable of it, but I do love you. Maker but I do."

He sighed. "But what's the use of that if I'm this? You need a man who can run his hands across you in earnest, put his lips to yours and taste the wellspring of you. For comfort, for excitement, to show you everything he wants to be for you," he said. He tried to block the image of someone else touching this woman, the painful ache of strange hands, but he knew his words were true. "That's what you need. You don't need me, a ghost who can only give you hollow words. No matter how much they might echo."

Standing where he was only reminded him of a time he'd almost believed he might be happy, so he walked back to the chair and sat again. "Which is why I won't ask you to remain. You are worth so much more than this. It's okay, love. Truly," he whispered. He slumped, waiting for that tear-bright feeling of loss, the fading out of the world around him until his life was pale and shadowed once again. Forever. He tried not to be afraid.

Nothing happened. The presence of her, remained steady and warm around him. His eyes filled and overflowed with tears as he understood the feelings she was sending him. She wouldn't abandon him. They were parts of a whole.

He looked up to the ceiling and imagined her watching him with an indulgent smile on that face, the one changed with each thought but was always, unceasingly beautiful. A hopeful smile tugged around his own lips, and he felt her laugh. The great joy of her was breaking waves, surf and sand and the incalculable distance of the unknown horizon. Infinite. And it was for him alone.

"I will find a way to you," he said. "Have no doubt of that."

She shouldn't. He didn't. He could do no less.

"But in the meantime, my most precious, most beautiful love," he said, leaning back and kicking his feet up on his desk, "let me tell you how much I adore you."

And he did.


End file.
